One problem faced by organizations in various industries is what to do with fixed storage devices, such as hard disk drives, when they become obsolete or need to be transferred between personnel. This is particularly problematic where the storage devices have been used to store sensitive information. For example, in government and defense industry organizations, information stored on hard disk drives of computer system is often subject to high levels of security and access on a need-to-know basis. Once the hard disk drive has been used to store such information, the hard disk drive must be treated with special care. For example, simply reformatting the hard disk drive does not insure that the stored information is not recoverable. Thus, something more needs to be done to secure the device. One solution to securing a fixed storage device is to physically destroy the storage device such that any data stored thereon is unrecoverable. However, this is an understandably expensive and time consuming solution. Further, the task of transporting storage devices to a destruction facility can itself be a difficult logistical problem. In fact, because of these problems, some organizations actually maintain storage areas simply to hold large numbers of obsolete computer systems.